Packaging machines are known that integrate into a single unit the various components necessary to form a container, fill the container with a liquid product, and seal the container. Such packaging machines typically feed carton blanks into the machine, seal the bottoms of the cartons, fill the cartons with a product dispensed from a product storage tank through a filling tube, seal the tops of the cartons, and off-load the filled cartons for shipping.
Where the liquid product dispensed into the cartons is a liquid foodstuff it may be necessary to maintain a generally sterile filling environment. The generally sterile filling environment must be maintained in the product storage tank, the filling tube, and in a region surrounding a terminus of the filling tube from which the product is dispensed. Further, the generally sterile filling environment must be maintained in an area below the terminus of the filling tube, extending as far below the terminus as is necessary to ensure that non-sterile air is effectively prevented from penetrating the area surrounding the terminus of the filling tube.
In order to prevent bacteria from forming in pans of the packaging machine that come into contact with certain liquid foodstuffs it is known to circulate a cleaning fluid through those parts. However, any liquid product remaining in the product tank at the end of the production cycle must be drained from the product tank before the cleaning cycle can begin. As the remaining liquid product is drained from the product tank it may become contaminated and unsuitable for reuse. It is therefore disposed of. The hygiene of the cleaning process itself has been problematic in the past.
In one known effort to improve the hygiene of the cleaning process, the need to dismantle and remove a product filling pipe from a packaging machine, in order to successfully clean the product filling pipe, is eliminated, as discussed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,964,444 to Hanerus et al. Hanerus et al. set forth a detachable lid. The detachable lid is fastened to a casing provided about a filling pipe of a packaging machine. Cleaning fluid is then cycled through the filling pipe, cleaning the interior of the filling pipe, and into the space surrounding the falling pipe, enclosed by the lid and the casing, cleaning the exterior of the pipe. The cleaning fluid then flows upwardly and out of the space surrounding the filling pipe through a branch pipe.
The foregoing lid itself requires manual installation, which is time-consuming and costly. In addition, remaining product cannot be cycled through the lid and remain contaminant free and reusable. Since packaging machines must be frequently cleaned, regularly disposing of remaining product is costly. The known lids fail to provide a solution to this problem.